The Safe House
by Princess Hannah
Summary: The Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, and Adric land near a mysterious establishment called The Safe House, which is anything but. What is this place? Why is it here? Most importantly, can it be stopped? X-posted at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind. Chapter 5 up!
1. Exits and Entrances

_I'm writing Who-fic. This was inevitable. This story's main roost is over at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind (where I reside under the penname TheRothwoman), the main Doctor Who fanfiction archive, but I decided to post it here too to give it a little more coverage. Fairly tame at the beginning, but gets a bit graphic with a smidge of hurt/comfort later. Enjoy!_

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The TARDIS landed with a rickety thud, as it was always apt to do after unexpectedly tossing its occupants around in the Time Vortex courtesy of some spatio-temporal anomaly that seemed to crop up almost as often as weeds in an unkempt garden. The Doctor wasn't sure what to wonder first: what the anomaly could be this time, or why they still surprised him at all. Traveling in time and space was always guaranteed to bring about encounters with all manners of the bizarre, but for some reason spatio-temporal anomalies seemed to favor him. Well, all in a day's-approximation's work, he supposed.

"Where are we, Doctor?" asked Nyssa, keeping her grip on the console in case anything else unexpected happened.

"I don't know," he said, almost automatically.

"I should've figured as much," said Tegan, hoisting herself up from the floor where she had fallen and dusting off her uniform indignantly. "Really, Doctor, don't you ever have _any_ idea where this old clunker is going?"

"A…certain percentage of the time," he replied, then catching Tegan's impatient eye added with a small smile, "but it's over fifty percent, if that's what you were worried about."

"Anything more specific?" she retorted, "or do you need Adric to work those stats out for you?"

"I could do it for you, you know, Doctor," Adric piped up, taking Tegan's remark as a compliment as her sarcasm went completely over his head "if you gave me the exact number of times you've landed where you meant to as opposed to the number of…"

"We're on Earth again," Nyssa intervened, "northern hemisphere, temperate region, local atmosphere high in humidity with cooler temperatures, estimated time somewhere in the 25th century."

"Ah, thank you, Nyssa," said the Doctor, bringing up an image of their immediate surroundings on the TARDIS scanner. The screen was dark and blurry, with plumy waves of white-ish grey wafting across the landscape.

"I can't see anything," said Tegan. "Looks too misty out there."

"Or it could just be nighttime," added Adric.

"Or it could be both," said the Doctor, "more than likely. Well! Shall we go out and have a look around?"

"In _that_?" Tegan protested. "We'll get lost faster than you can say 'Sleepy Hollow'!"

"Which is precisely why I'm going to send Adric to get the torches from the third cupboard from the right in the second equipment room down the hall to the left," said the Doctor. "Adric, could you get the torches from the third cupboard from the right in the second equipment room down the hall to the left?" Adric nodded and trotted off to retrieve their light sources.

"But Doctor," said Nyssa, "Don't you think it would be safer to wait until morning to go out searching, or at least until the fog clears?"

"Nyssa, as much as I admire your thoughtfulness," said the Doctor, "if there's a spatio-temporal anomaly out there, the sooner we find it and fix it, the better." He patted a hand on her shoulder and unrolled his hat before Adric returned to the console room carrying a bundle of wooden sticks in his arms. Wrong torches. The Doctor sighed.

"Third cupboard _from_ the right, Adric."

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The foliage around them grew thick but not unnaturally so, as if trying to decide whether to be welcoming or not to these mysterious new strangers. With observance, a path-like narrow clearing could be made out through the tree trunks that bulged from the earth and sprawled upwards, blocking out the moon and stars. There was a pitch-darkness to it all that, for some odd reason, was not punctuated by the trill of typical wilderness noises. No rustling of squirrels scurrying through the leaves, no croaking of frogs in some nearby pond, no hooting of wise old owls, not quite complete silence but just…noiselessness. The team trundled along after Adric had experimentally quipped "Sleepy Hollow" just to prove to Tegan that they weren't going to get lost that fast and kept going for what felt like a couple hours. The torches acted as sufficient beacons, a small but welcome comfort; their cones of light swayed obediently up and down and side to side at the flick of a wrist as if to say "yessir/yes'm, just doing my job" and throwing warning shadows across the ground to keep their owners from falling over large, unintentionally obstructive tree roots.

After a while, the trees stopped abruptly and opened onto a road. It was strange after all that time in the forest, like a whole other world marching stoically through the stalwart one that was already there but grew stronger where it was instead of fighting back and taking what was its. A waxing gibbous moon shone overhead in a sky dotted with stars, obscured only from the group's point of view because of the light from the torches interfering with their eyes. If that was all that was creating any sort of light pollution, then it was doubtful that any major establishments, towns, or cities, lay nearby. The road stretched out and curved in both directions, neither one yielding its secrets of where it lead.

The Doctor produced a coin from his coat pocket, flipped it, pointed right, and began walking left. His companions followed suit. Tegan seemed quite relieved to finally have a solid man-made (or otherwise-made, depending on what new intelligent species had settled on Earth in the past few centuries) surface to walk on again, the Doctor prattled on about fixing an approximate date on when the road was built based on its material and its wear and tear, and Adric—growing a bit bored from the lack of excitement—leaned over to Nyssa and whispered "I just realized: we've been out here for a whole of two hours and seventeen minutes and Tegan still hasn't said a word about _still_ not being at Heathrow. I think this might be a new record."

After enough time had passed that each companion had a chance to ask "How much further, Doctor?" at least once each (with differing levels of impatience), they finally reached something that wasn't forest or empty road. It was an archway, stone at the base and some sort of metal in the top-frame. In this frame were three words in a kind of spindly lettering that could convey whimsicalness by day and menace by night. It read: The Safe House.

"Well," said Tegan, her voice draped in a lovely silken dress of sarcasm, "_This_ certainly doesn't look anything remotely like the kind of places we _usually_ find with traps and monsters and mortal peril at every turn."

"Oh, come on, Tegan," Adric scoffed with a healthy dose of exasperation, both from Tegan's statement and from his own exhaustion at having walked so much, "We haven't even gone inside yet!"

"Do we even need to?" said Tegan. "Just this front gate gives me the creeps."

"We've come this far already," said Nyssa. "Besides, the spatio-temporal anomaly could be inside."

"And it could also be an actual safe house," the Doctor added, pulling out the sonic screwdriver to fiddle with the locking mechanism on the gate. "During the second World War, several million Londoners were evacuated to the British countryside to escape the bombing. Perhaps this place was built for a similar purpose. Now let's see, what wars did Britain get involved in between the twentieth and twenty-fifth centuries…" He trailed off and started theorizing to himself again before he finished with the lock. To everyone's surprise, it opened quite noiselessly instead of producing a loud rusty creaking. The Doctor gestured for his companions to follow and they all walked through together.

"I still don't understand what you're so worried about, Tegan," said Adric, speaking as much from genuine misunderstanding as he was from a desire to reassure his TARDIS-mate. "I mean, it says 'safe' right at the gate." Tegan looked about to sigh, but seemed to decide halfway through that if she was going to spend breath she might as well do so constructively.

"Adric, by any chance do you know what irony is?"

"…Something to do with iron?"

Maybe that sigh was worth breathing after all.

* * *

The house itself was reached within minutes. Had it not been for the more modern lock at the gate and the readout from the TARDIS console, the Doctor could've sworn that they'd landed in the 19th or 20th centuries and not the 25th. The architecture looked very late-Victorian but was not the least bit worn, like it was still in use. It stood a good three stories tall and was hardly large enough to be a mansion, but looked as though it could easily accommodate a larger-than-average family. A larger-than-average family that had largely isolated itself from the rest of civilization. There really wasn't anything to do but go up and investigate. After seeing that the house had no doorbell, the Doctor knocked fervently at the front door.

"Um, hello?" he called. "Is there anyone at home? I'm afraid it may be quite urgent!" Silence. Adric moved over to one of the windows and shined his torch inside. After a few moments' investigation, he turned back to the group looking puzzled.

"I can't see anything!" he said, "And it's not like the inside is empty or there's something solid blocking it, it's like the light can't even penetrate the glass! There's just…blackness on the other side, or like the window isn't even a window at all."

Returning the look of puzzlement, the Doctor tried the doorknob. Much like the gate the door opened effortlessly, even more so as it didn't even need unlocking. Treading cautiously, they all went inside. As expected, the front room was dark apart from the light of their torches. A quick sweep turned up nothing unusual, aside from the fact that it turned up nothing at all. The room contained no carpets, no rugs, no vases, no decorative flora, no ornaments, no furnishings whatsoever. The windows appeared to be covered with a kind of heavily tinted film, explaining why Adric couldn't see in. It seemed to work both ways, as the crew couldn't see out of them either.

"I don't understand," Nyssa muttered. "Why build windows in the first place if you're going to make them impervious to light?"

"Hello!" the Doctor called again. "So sorry to barge in like this, but it really is important!"

"We're looking for a spatio-temporal anomaly!" called Tegan. "Have you seen one anywhere?" Nyssa gave her a look.

"Tegan, please," she said, trying to get her friend to be reasonable, "This isn't a time to be joking." Tegan sighed again.

"I'm sorry," she sighed, with a distinct air of defeat, "But I'm just tired and exhausted and paranoid out of my wits that something's going to jump out at me any second…"

"Well then," piped the Doctor, "Perhaps we should jump out at it first? Come on, let's check the rooms." Through a small archway off to the side lay what would appear to be the parlor room, had it any sofas or chinaware cabinets or a table. The Doctor went first with Tegan following close behind. He gestured inside with a "ladies first" gesture, prompting an unappreciative raise of the eyebrow from his companion before going in.

Everything went completely black. Not as though the torches had gone out, not as though they had closed their eyes, not as though they were unconscious. It was as though there was no such thing as light anymore.

The room and the space around them had simply stopped existing.


	2. Three Rooms

_Here's the spooky stuff, just in time for Halloween. Be forewarned, this chapter contains some graphic images. Also, the text in the second room is supposed to look like that. There is nothing screwing with your internet. As usual, this is x-posted on A Teaspoon and an Open Mind._

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Tegan stood in a world of nothing. Her torch had simply blinked out of existence. There was no sign of the Doctor, Nyssa, or Adric. No sign of any walls or ceiling. Just an empty vastness of dark. She shivered, though it wasn't particularly cold; cool enough, though, to make the unnaturalness and alarm of the situation all the more difficult to bear. It was like being in a windless night in autumn.

After looking frantically around for any sign of the others, for all the good it would do, she cried out "DOCTOR?" Nothing.

"NYSSA?" Nothing.

"ADRIC?" Nothing.

"ANYBODY?" Still nothing.

Tegan hugged herself tightly. Part of her brain was telling her there was no use, that this world of nothing was all there was and all there ever would be for her. Another part was telling her to be afraid because something had happened to her friends and whatever it was, it was about to happen to her, too.

Fortunately, despite the crushing terror, Tegan was not one to give up so easily. Still clutching herself by the arms, she tried walking forward. At the very least, there was a solid surface below her to walk on. Putting all her faith in that one thing she knew existed, she kept walking. Still nothing, still darkness, still no stimulus apart from the constant chill. Suddenly she realized that walking through it almost created the sensation of wind. Spurred by this discovery of something else in this world that was even remotely tangible, she started to walk faster. Then faster, and faster.

She broke into a run.

Feeling. Existing. Ground beneath her feet. Wind against her face. All there was. Drink it up. Revel in it. Take it all in. There's nothing else. It's all she's got.

Exist.

Be.

_Something._

"SOMEBODY! PLEASE! HELP!"

And with a sudden _thud_, she collided with something. Another body. Tegan grasped at it desperately without hesitation. They both managed to stay standing and it felt like the other figure was, in turn, clinging fast at something else. Tegan knew what the feel of this velvet material reminded her of…

"_Nyssa?_"

"Tegan? Is that you?" spoke the other, now confirmed, Trakenite figure. "Oh, thank goodness! Are you alright?"

"I'm worlds better now that I've found you," Tegan gasped, both from relief and shortness of breath. It didn't even matter that she couldn't see Nyssa's face, just her voice and touch was enough reassurance. "What happened to the boys?"

"We're right here," said the Doctor's voice from Tegan's right. She put out a hand experimentally and, sure enough, there was that old woolen cricket pullover.

"Can we try moving now, Doctor?" asked a half-inquisitive half-impatient third voice from between the Doctor and Nyssa which could only be Adric.

"Yes, of course, now that we've got everyone here," said the Doctor. "Now, listen all of you, this is very important: do NOT break contact. If you do, the rest of us won't be able to hear you and you'll get lost and goodness knows if we'll be able to find you again. Let's get a move on, shall we?"

Tegan could almost hear him smiling at that last statement, on one hand feeling reassured that the Doctor was taking this all in stride but on the other feeling more frightened. They were in a world of _nothing_ and yet he was acting so calmly. This was all just business as usual for him, wasn't it?

The crew stumbled forward in a cluster through the emptiness. If Tegan remembered the general outlay of the room correctly they would've run into a wall by now, if it was simply a case of the room going dark. Something was definitely watching them. It might even be watching their…_her_ mind. Or maybe it was just paranoia. Tegan unconsciously gripped Nyssa's arm even tighter, desperately needing that extra sensation of solidness.

Solidness…

Her mind backtracked to her observation about the wall, and then to the floor beneath her. _Solid._ That's what they needed: a wall. The revelation came to her fast and strong and suddenly…

_Bump._

"Aha!" the Doctor cried, triumphantly. "I think I've found the door!"

There was a collective sigh of relief from the group, followed by the faintest sound of a doorknob rattling…and suddenly Tegan was afraid again. She had heard her friends' voices, she had felt their clothes, but she still hadn't actually _seen_ them. What if something had happened to them? What if they went into the light and they'd all been horribly transfigured? What if they'd been replaced by doppelgangers? Tegan remembered the one time she'd seen _Psycho_, and that climax where the chair in the basement was turned around to reveal Mrs. Bates' taxidermal corpse. She didn't want to know, didn't want to see…

…was that the cracking and wrinkling of skin she heard?

"Goodness, this door is heavy!" gasped the Doctor. A sliver of light—LIGHT!—wormed its way around the rectangular doorframe and gradually grew larger. Tegan turned around to see if it helped at all to illuminate the vast emptiness behind them. It took her eyes a few seconds to readjust from the sudden re-existence of light, but then she could make out the walls.

Without a sound, they were closing in; silently inching their way towards the TARDIS crew, threatening to crush them against the door unless they go it open and _fast_.

They were forcing Tegan out into the light she now feared.

"DOCTOR, THE WALLS!" she screamed.

"Oh no…"

"We've only got…" Adric paused for a split-second, presumably to run the numbers in his head, calculating the walls' length, speed, and cubic meters of floor remaining, "…eight seconds left!"

Tegan Jovanka refused to die here. She moved to the edge of the door and helped the Doctor wrench it open. The initial resistance vanished in a flash. It was suddenly only as heavy as a regular door. The four of them bolted through and slammed the door shut behind them. The space reverberated with the sound of heavy breathing, both from gasps of relief and pants of exhaustion, and Tegan dared to look around.

They were in another room, empty and windowless but with walls painted a dull yellow and overall perfectly normal-looking. It was illuminated by the ceiling itself, presumably some sort of 25th century lighting technology, and _mercifully_ had a second door. She looked at her TARDIS-mates. There was the Doctor, floppy hair and cricket togs and celery and all; Nyssa, still curls and velvety purple all over; Adric, carrying himself awkwardly but nonetheless mathematically excellent. Everyone was alright, but that still wasn't enough. Tegan felt violated, like something had been invading the dark crevices of her mind she rarely dared venture to…

"Doctor," she said, her voice shaking with panic, "please, let's get out of here. This place is too dangerous!"

"And how would you suggest we do that?" said the Doctor. "Assuming the door behind us is the quickest way to the entrance, we'd have to go _back_ through that in order to leave for certain…and even that's not so certain."

"But we _were_ able to find our way out!" Adric reminded him, desperately groping for certainties about the situation on his own.

"Only because we were lucky. Very, _very_ lucky." The Doctor had that look on his face that he always got when he was about to convey some necessity that he knew everyone in his party would frown upon with vigorous aplomb. "Besides, whatever we were looking for, it's more than likely connected with this house. We must press on and find the exact source."

"But, Doctor," said Nyssa, "what if the room _is_ the spatio-temporal anomaly?"

"No, I don't think so," the Doctor shook his head. "That room was just an effect being controlled by some external influence. It looked relatively normal before we walked in, but so did this entire house. No, I think there's more at work here than just that one room." He started to move towards the other door.

"What if there's something worse in there?" Tegan blurted out.

"Worse than _nothing?_" said Adric, incredulously. Everyone stopped and stared at him as though he was speaking gibberish, or had simply forgotten how many things there were out there that could most certainly be worse than nothing. He held his ground. "I'm just saying that we're much better off facing a danger if it's _tangible_, and we can actually see or touch it!"

"Quite right," replied the Doctor, almost off-handedly. "Now, as a precaution, I suggest that we all enter this next room with our hands already joined in the event that something could get us lost or separated again." He held his hands out to his sides, Tegan taking his right hand and Nyssa taking his left. Adric grasped Nyssa's free hand, still looking characteristically dejected. She threaded her fingers through his.

"Don't worry, Adric," she said, smiling and giving his hand a small squeeze, "when we get back to the TARDIS, there are some excellent books on metaphysics you might be interested in." Adric gave a quick return smile before turning away slightly. Nyssa presumed it was some quirk of Alzarian biology that prevented him from blushing full-on.

"Alright," the Doctor announced, "Let's go in, shall we?" The crew moved in unison towards the door and the Doctor and Nyssa's collective hands turned the knob. The door opened to reveal another room, empty again but this time naturally dark. They went inside an**[ERROR**

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**SOMETHING IMPORTANT.]**

And they were out.

At some point they must have all started running through the room, for they all went sprawling to the floor as they crashed through the doorframe at the same time. They were in a room identical to the first interim space: completely bare but with full-ceiling lighting and a second door.

The Doctor was the first to his feet. Nyssa huddled in an almost fetal position for a few moments trying to collect her senses before standing up. Tegan stood when she remembered which way was up and helped Adric off the floor while he tried to remember what "up" was. They all stared at the door, trying to get their thoughts back together into something even remotely resembling coherency. None of them even bothered to ask, "What was that?" The shear futility of hoping there was a clear and coherent answer was too much.

Looking around at his companions, the Doctor noticed something: Nyssa was looking very unusual. He had seen her frightened before, but not this particular _kind_ of frightened. She looked as though something primal inside her mind, or even her subconscious, had been touched, wrestled and dragged to the surface. She looked…very much the same as Tegan did when they came out of the first room…

"Nyssa, are you feeling alright?" he asked, bending over slightly to get a better look at her face and ignoring Adric's and Tegan's looks of indignation at suddenly being sidelined after such an ordeal. Nyssa unconsciously brought her arms in closer to her body and shivered slightly, avoiding the Doctor's direct gaze.

"I…I don't know," she muttered, shakily. "I…feel like…something was watching me…something was trying to get inside my head…and…"

"You too?" gasped Tegan. "That's what I felt when we went inside the first room!"

"Adric?" said the Doctor to the still-silent boy. He looked up, confused at first by the question, but then understanding.

"I didn't feel anything," he said. "At least not like something trying to read my thoughts. I did feel like I was being _over_powered by something, though. Maybe it was the same force reading Nyssa and Tegan's minds and projecting them onto the rest of us."

The Doctor stopped to consider this. His brow furrowed slightly, and then unfurrowed into an expression that, for him, always signaled an impending "…oh no."

"What?"

"Unfortunately, I think Adric may be on exactly the right track." There was an unsettled ripple in the Doctor's young charges.

"You mean…this house is doing something like, what, reading our minds and taking our fears and making them real?" said Tegan with a rising tone of heavy distress she usually got when things took a very serious turn for the worst. Nyssa put a hand on her shoulder.

"Of course they're not 'made real,' Tegan," she said, though quite frankly it sounded more like she was trying to reassure herself than her friend. "I'm sure it's just some sort of…fully-immersive sensory control field."

"Nyssa's right, or she could be…" the Doctor continued. "They started using the technology in the entertainment industry on Earth around the twenty-fourth century, fully interactive movies and things like that. Unfortunately, the system had enough flaws in it that it began to cause severe long-term psychologically damaging side effects that could take any amount of time to manifest. So they banned it. You see, one of the most common problems was that after a while people began having difficulty distinguishing between the generated illusion and reality. If we're in one now, it means someone's controlling it…and unless we find them and stop them, there's no telling how long we could be stuck here."

"But, Doctor," said Adric, sounding confused again, "I thought you said that what we saw in the rooms was a possible effect of the spatio-temporal anomaly."

"Yes," replied the Doctor, "But trust me, Adric, I know spatio-temporal anomalies and last time I checked they couldn't read minds. Whether intentional or no, whoever's running this establishment is delaying us in getting there. I'm afraid we've no choice but to keep going. Now, the sensory field appears to be scanning us one at a time, and presuming the first two rooms were generated from Tegan and Nyssa, respectively…"

"…That leaves just you and me," Adric finished, pointing between himself and the Doctor. They looked at each other gravely.

"Yes…" Seemingly resigning himself to their fate, the Doctor half-sighed. "Well, try not to be afraid of anything _too_ dangerous when we go in there, Adric." He sadly patted the boy's back and turned towards the next door. Adric gave him a look.

"You too, Doctor," he said as the four of them gathered at the door and joined hands again.

"How will we know which one of your fears it's manifesting?" asked Nyssa, trying to act like she wasn't going as pale as she was. The Doctor didn't look much better. When all said and done, none of them did.

"We won't…until we're inside."

Adric's and the Doctor's hands opened the door. Just like the last two, it looked just like any other dark, empty room. They went in.

Nothing changed.

They took a few more steps forward and, after still no change, dropped their hands. Light flooded in from the open door behind them and allowed a better view of the space. It was large and unsurprisingly bare. After their two previous experiences, this in itself was almost frightening instead of reassuring.

"Oh, come on," breathed Tegan in frustration. "Don't tell me that _both_ of you are afraid of _nothing_. Or does the sensory field just have a thing for women?"

"Your room turned up nothing," said Adric, almost nonchalantly but somehow louder than usual. If one paid attention, he seemed to be saying it not as though he was trying to make a point, but to protect himself from something. This could be his room. As much as his adolescent pride tried to hide it, he was scared. Nonetheless, Tegan seethed.

"If you must know, I was afraid of a _world_ of nothing," she growled through partially gritted teeth, "an _entire_ plane of existence just _devoid_ of…_everything!_ No sounds, no people, no walls, no sky, no light…"

It was at this juncture that Nyssa gave a horrified gasp, effectively silencing Tegan.

"Look at that!" She pointed to the middle of the floor where something was distorting the shadows. There was something lying there. Two things. The Doctor opened the door more to let in extra light in the direction they needed to see them properly.

They were two bodies, female bodies, dressed in purple, and both appeared to have suffered extremely violent deaths. Bone was open to the air, laden with flanks of red muscle and tendons of a sickly off-white. Skin was exposed in a few unwholesome places, bare to the world after the fabric that lay shredded on the floor was forcefully wrest from it task by some horrific force. Dark smatterings of blood marked the last resting place of these two impossible figures.

"_No…_"

Adric bolted towards the bodies, as though confirming their identities for absolute certain was then, and always had been, the single most important revelation in the history of the universe.

"Adric, wait!" cried Nyssa. "It's just an illusion!"

As if reality bellowed _no_ in their faces, a third body fell from the ceiling and landed on Adric. They crashed in a heap and lay splayed mere inches from the female corpses. Adric felt his outstretched hand connect with something cold, wet, and sticky and opened his eyes to find it cupping the cheek of a dead Nyssa. Or at least what _would_ have been her cheek if it had skin on it. Turning his head slowly right, trying as best he could to block out the image of the Tegan corpse, Adric found himself looking into his own face. It was brushed with hair on a head half-severed from its body and stared very intently upward through one massively bloodshot eye and one empty socket.

Three dead companions. This must be the Doctor's fear.

Whatever piercing shriek emitted by Adric as his sanity broke clashed with the war cry of the duplicates' death-bringer, claws dug deep into the ceiling.


	3. Separation

"Good _heavens…_"

The creature that hung above them was nothing short of monstrous. Taking up nearly half the ceiling, it had the appearance of a giant amphibious scorpion that had just carved its way through a wall of living flesh. Scaly blood-soaked pincers the size of small sofas snapped at the air while a long, thick tail adorned with a deadly-looking stinger whipped back and forth at its rear end. It looked down at the TARDIS crew with pitch-black vacant eyes that conveyed one of the basest of primal instinct. _I am going to kill you._ Nyssa took a step forward.

"You're just an illusion," she declared to the beast. "I am not afraid of you."

The creature swung its massive tail down, crashing hard into Nyssa and Tegan and bowling them to the floor. Streaks of blood lay swathed across their left sides. The Doctor stood there, wide-eyed. Why was he doing nothing? He looked up at the creature's position. If he tried to run to his companions' aid, it could easily just drop from the ceiling and crush him. It could just as easily stay there, pinning him down in an unacceptable space between it and the floor and possibly preventing him from regenerating properly, and then he'd be of no use to anybody. They'd all be dead in seconds.

He looked at the other walls. Just like the other rooms, there was a second exit. The door behind him was still open. There was only one logical course of action: he had to lead the creature out of this room, away from his young charges so they could escape.

"Everybody GO!" he shouted, dramatically gesturing towards the second door and flailing his arms furiously to grab the creature's attention before racing towards the entrance. "Don't worry about me!"

The creature got there first, or at least its claw did, crashing down from the ceiling and dropping its mighty pincer between the Doctor and the door. In the middle of the room, Nyssa and Tegan desperately struggled to their feet and half-rushed half-stumbled over to where Adric lay with the corpses.

To say that he looked as though he had seen a ghost would have been horribly appropriate, and also an understatement. He looked as though his very eyes were rejecting everything in the room. With a sickening shove and very noticeable hesitation, Nyssa braved the task of hoisting the Adric corpse off of the living but motionless boy before both girls grabbed his arms and yanked him to his feet. As they started towards the door, Tegan looked back at the nightmare monster and the Time Lord now trapped by pincers on all sides.

"But we can't just leave the Doctor!" she cried. Nyssa gave her a frantic look of helplessness.

"He's giving us time. There's nothing we can do!" she said, in the remarkable combination of loudly and mournfully. Sharing one more heartbreaking look, they continued their labored dash toward the exit. Whatever state Adric was in, he was mercifully still conscious enough to move his legs and take some of the weight off his friends. They reached the door, wrenched it open, crossed over the threshold…

The room behind them suddenly exploded with fire.

Adric _bolted_.

They had somehow made it out of the rooms and into a hallway lined with more doors. Above them to the right was a single lighting panel, not unlike the full-ceiling ones they'd seen before. Adric was running towards a door under a second panel in the opposite direction. The girls gave chase, calling for him to stop or at least slow down. He did neither, sprinting towards the door with all the desperation and grace of a wild animal being hunted by predators many times its size. Considering the previous room, it should come as no surprise. He swung the door open and ran in, Nyssa and Tegan hot on his heels. This room looked like the other interim spaces: bare walls, though darker this time, and full-ceiling lighting (though this one looked as though it going on the fritz), and a second door on another wall. A safe room. Tegan closed the door behind them as Adric threw himself into a far corner, quivering and curling himself up into a ball.

"I don't think we're safe in here," Tegan panted. "How can we be safe _anywhere_ in this house?"

"You've seen what the other interim spaces were like," replied Nyssa, "This one should operate along the same principles. No manifestations of fears here. Besides, I don't think it would be wise to try moving Adric again until he's regained his senses." She turned towards the corner where Adric lay huddled and muttering to himself. He was clutching his skull as though desperate to keep something out or something in and his breath came in ragged gasps.

"So do you think that was his room?" asked Tegan. "The only time I've seen him looking anything remotely like this was after he tried piloting the TSS on Deva Loka."

At first Nyssa shot her a look that begged, "_Why_ does the Doctor insist on telling me that nothing significant occurred there?" But then she said, "Somehow I don't think so. The Doctor wasn't one of the corpses, and he's always far more concerned for our well-being than…for his own…" Her voice trailed off, her mind turning unwillingly back towards that final image of the Doctor about to be crushed or devoured by that monster, or blasted by that unexpected inferno. Tegan's mind seemed to be doing the same.

"But what about that creature? And the fire?" said Tegan. Nyssa didn't respond. "…Do you think he's still alive?" A murmur this time, not sure how much she dared to hope. All three of them had seen the Doctor change his whole body after a fatal accident once before, but could that process only be triggered under certain conditions? Was it a one-time thing? Could it survive damage that much worse than falling off a tower railing? Nyssa looked just as doubtful.

"I don't know."

"And we're just gonna _leave_ him out there?"

"Tegan, _please_," said Nyssa, "there are too many unknown variables in this situation. We don't know what else is out there, and judging from what we've seen so far it could be literally anything and everything." She took a breath. Just like before, she sounded as though she was trying to reassure herself as much as she was Tegan. "The Doctor's proved on multiple occasions that he's quite capable of taking care of himself should the need arise. For now we're better off staying where we are, and we need to look after Adric. I don't think he's very stable."

She turned to face the young Alzarian and moved towards him cautiously so as not to startle him. Tegan stood where she was, gripping herself out of nerves again. On top of the Doctor's unknown fate, her teammates were falling apart, too. Nyssa only sounded sure of herself by the skin of her teeth, and considering Adric's usual over-confident nature the sight of him shattered like this was a fright unto itself.

Part of her mind zoned out and focused on the sounds, or lack thereof, in the house. There was no crackling of a large house fire, nor the lumbering of a killer behemoth, nor the voice of the Doctor calling their names. Maybe the room was soundproofed, or maybe there really was nothing else outside. Tegan resisted the haunting urge to go outside and check, an urge driven by a need to know for sure and a need to get out of that room.

"Adric?" Nyssa said to the shaking youth in the corner, stopping a couple meters from him and crouching down to be more at his eye level. "Adric, can you understand me? Come on, now. It's Nyssa, your friend. Let me help you." Adric shot a fleeting glance in her direction before resuming his muttering. At this distance, Nyssa could make out his words.

"No…you're dead…you're dead…we're all dead…you're dead…you're dead…we're all dead…" He repeated these lines almost as though reciting a verse, a fragment of a children's nursery rhyme skipping on an old record.

"No, Adric, look: we're _alive!_ We're not dead!" beamed Nyssa, though it didn't shine through much more than the faulty ceiling panel trying to illuminate the room. It certainly didn't reach Adric.

"Us in the future…us in the future…us in the future…"

"Adric, don't be silly. That _can't_ be us in the future, it was just a traumatic illusion created by the house!" Nyssa was all but lying through her teeth, becoming painfully aware of the glaring flaws in her logic. The bodies and the creature were the first solid objects they'd come across in this house so Adric could be completely right, viciously addled as he was. This was the first time Nyssa had stopped to think about it, but there was every possibility that those corpses were in fact the three of them in the future.

"Too late…everyone's gone…too late…everyone's gone…"

"Adric, it's alright!" said Nyssa, moving in a bit closer. "Tegan and I are right here…"

The next few motions happened in a sudden flash. Adric snapped his head around and finally looked Nyssa directly in the eyes, being silent for a few scant seconds. There was a spark of recognition there, but not the kind that signaled a noticed friend. It was an alarm.

"NO, YOU'RE DEAD!"

With astonishing reflexes, Adric tore his star-shaped badge from his breast pocket and slung it at Nyssa like a throwing dagger. It struck her square in the forehead with a sharp enough pain to send her staggering backwards. Clapping a hand to the impact point, she felt something moist. She looked at her hand. The glance of the badge had drawn blood. Just a trickle, but it did not negate the fact that Adric was unstable to the point of aggression against his friends. He was unjustifiably seeing them as hostile.

"Nyssa, are you alright?" Tegan gasped, rushing to her friend's side and seeing her new injury. She looked at Adric with a mixture of astonishment and anger. "You stop this right now! We've got enough insanity going on as it is!"

"STAY BACK! STAY AWAY! YOU'RE DEAD!" he cried again, this time with hints of whimpering. He pressed himself as firmly against the wall as he could, fixing the girls with a deep deer-in-the-headlights stare. He repeated this at a lower volume and then several times more, gradually decreasing each time until he was whispering it. It was like a safeguard: as long as he kept saying it, he might be protected.

Tegan tried to think of another response, but none came up. She just wasn't used to friends losing their minds like this. As long as she and Nyssa didn't try to approach and Adric stayed in his corner, they could probably avoid more unnecessary clashes.

"We'll have to think of something else," said Nyssa at last. Tegan gave her a slightly toned-down version of an incredulous look.

"But he just attacked you!" Tegan retorted. "He hurt you! And we should get that looked at…"

"Tegan, really, it's just a scratch." Nyssa brushed the wound with her hand and then jerked the hand away, as if to declare the issue over and done with. "I think he's having an attack of trauma-induced mania. For now, there's not much point in trying to restrain him unless he lashes out again. I think it's best for us to keep our distance until he's calmed down a bit. We don't want to frighten him anymore."

"So, what do we do now?" asked Tegan, a bit plaintively. Nyssa was silent again for a few moments before the ceiling panel flickered again. This time it went out completely for just a few seconds. In those few seconds, Adric stopped whispering and was quiet again. When the panel at last came back to life, he was sitting curled up again with his arms wrapped around himself and clutching very tightly. He was staring very intently at his knees and, quietly in a slow but horrifying cadence, started singing.

"_Everyone's coming to get you…everyone's coming to get poor Adric…everyone's coming to get you…everyone's coming to get poor Nyssa…everyone's coming to get you…everyone's coming to get poor Tegan…_"

"Adric, what are you…" Tegan began, but…

"_Everyone's coming to get you…everyone's coming to get poor Adric…_"

"Stop it."

"_Everyone's coming to get you…everyone's coming to get poor Nyssa…_"

"I said stop it!"

"_Everyone's coming to get you…everyone's coming to get poor Tegan…_"

"NYSSA, MAKE HIM STOP! PLEASE!"

"I don't know if I can!"

"Well, do _something!_"

Nyssa thought for a moment, trying to block out the chilling song, before she had an idea. Still staying low, she moved back towards Adric until she was at a safe but close distance and knelt down, putting her hands on her knees and leaning forward slightly. Perfectly matching Adric's tempo but raising her volume just above his, she began to sing:

"_Nobody's coming to get you…nobody's coming to get poor Adric…nobody's coming to get you…nobody's coming to get poor Nyssa…nobody's coming to get you…nobody's coming to get poor Tegan…_"

"What are you _doing?_" asked Tegan, with just enough exasperation to show her confusion but not too much that it sounded like a complaint. Nyssa paused to answer her.

"I'm trying a sort of counter-mantra," she replied. "If I can imprint this on him through repetition, maybe it will help calm him down."

"But that won't work! Have you thought about what you're saying?" Tegan was reaching a point of near-hysterics where there was little possibility of anything anyone said soothing her nerves, no matter how sensible the argument. "_'Nobody's coming to get you…' _What if he thinks that means that nobody's coming to rescue us? That we'll be stuck in this house for the rest of our lives?"

"Well, it's certainly worth a try!" Nyssa tried to keep her voice steady. With two members of their party losing it, there was no sense in her succumbing to the madness as well. In fact, considering the contents of her fear room, it was more than senseless: it was imperative. She resumed her faux-soothing melody.

Tegan looked at the pair of them: alien teen geniuses with no families to speak of, trying to sing the madness away. They were a veritable matched set, and somehow they made her feel like the only sane person in the universe. Or maybe they were the sane ones and it was just she who was going mad?

"_Everyone's coming to get you…everyone's coming to get the Doctor…_"

The door. Tegan had to get to the door. She had to get out of there, away from the songs of doom, away from the flickering lights, away to wherever help might be even remotely possible. If she could find the Doctor…

…the door was locked.

"NO!" Feeling too full of desperation to have time to explain this to Nyssa, she bolted for the other door, the only other way out, having no idea where it led…

The singing, along with everything else, stopped. She had re-entered the world of nothing.


	4. Doing What He Does Best

_This chapter contains an All Creatures Great And Small reference that I swear was unintentional when I thought it up._

_

* * *

_

The Doctor wasn't sure how he wasn't already used to situations like this. In front of him was the face of the nightmare creature. On either side of him were the long forearms that ended in the massive pincers behind him. Above him, that stinger. Escape was looking exceptionally unlikely. For the time being, the Doctor's current situation wasn't exactly the worst outcome. After all, if the creature was focusing all of its attention on him it meant that his companions had all the more opportunity to get away. He could hear Nyssa and Tegan yelling to each other about not leaving him there, but they wasted little time in rushing towards the door.

"Ah, hello there," said the Doctor, meekly. "I don't suppose you're going to try and eat me now, are you? Or kill me? Maim me? Something of the sort? Whose fear are you, exactly? Adric's? Good Lord, that boy's got quite an imagination." The creature just roared at him, arching itself up on its hindquarters, preparing to strike…and giving the Doctor an opening.

"Ah. Well, naturally. Now, if you wouldn't mind _following me?_" He ducked down and made a bid for the door through the space under the small point in the creature's arm. He had barely reached the crook when suddenly the room started to feel hotter…much hotter…was it just him or was the creature _glowing_? And what was that strange sensation the Doctor was feeling in his mind?

Oh, no.

With the fastest reflexes he could muster, the Doctor somersaulted towards the open door just ahead of the ensuing explosion of flames. Barreling over the threshold, he wrenched the door shut behind him. And then there was silence. There was no continuation of the roar of the fire, nor of the creature, in the other room. For a split second the Doctor wondered if he had gone deaf, but then he remembered the reverberating slam of the door ringing in his ears for a few more split seconds. After that, it was almost as though some higher power had decreed that sound was some superfluous growth on the universe that was quite undesirable or unseemly and had to be done away with at that particular moment. The Doctor did not entirely approve of this, so the universe saw fit to provide him with another form of sensory input. As he stood there, the Doctor become slowly but surely aware of the delectable but haunting aroma of grilled celery wafting up to his nostrils. He looked down pitifully at his humble little decorative vegetable, now mostly charred and blackened, and sighed mournfully.

"Well, that's a shame," he said aloud, more to break the silence than anything. It wasn't as though the universe was going to conveniently provide him with some random bystander to hear his bemoaning and respond with a "yes, it certainly is, Doctor."

Deciding that the state of his apparel was the least of his worries at the moment, the Doctor tried to figure out what his next course of action should be. Reuniting with his companions was certainly a high priority, but the only two ways out of the interim space would lead him through fear rooms again. As much as he hated to admit it, those were really his only options at the moment, even though it meant going through…_that_ again. Now the only question remaining was: how was he going to get past it? He would need some sort of shielding but of course he didn't have any, nor did he have anything to improvise with. Unless…

The Doctor removed the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and began undoing the hinges on the door. Little by little the screws came out until the whole thing was willingly parted from its frame. No scorch marks on the other side. Curious, but definitely encouraging. The Doctor combed the depths of his pockets some more, looking for something that might prevent his fingers from getting burned off. In less than a minute he had produced a cricket ball, a small spool of metallic twine, assorted loose change from about four different galaxies, a lone Jelly Baby, and an engraving of what was either a highly endangered species of Martian polarfish or a Venusian ambassador he'd once had lunch with. Not feeling in the mood for confectionaries more partial to his previous incarnation, the Doctor replaced everything except the twine, which he looped around the middle hinge as a makeshift handle.

Tightening the twine around the fingers of his left hand and grasping the doorknob in his right, the Doctor stood and took a deep breath. There was not the slightest guarantee that this was going to work. The flames could easily lap at him from behind, or below. The door could suddenly forget its mysterious immunity to fire and burst into ashes in his hands. Of course, the room in front of him _looked_ empty, but so had all the others. His friends were lost and probably in danger, and anything could happen.

But, realistically speaking, when had that ever stopped him?

The Doctor charged forward, and the leap over the threshold called the inferno into being once more. The running and the searing heat drew sweat almost instantly from the Doctor's skin, coating it in a sheen that glistened fiercely against the fire. The door kept the flames off his front, but he'd have to check his coattails when he got out—_if_ he got out—no, there was no room for doubt if his companions needed him…

_I must get through the flames, I must get through the flames…_

Just as the metal in his hands began to heat up to highly uncomfortable levels, he collided with something solid. The other door. He'd almost made it. Swinging his door around, he reached for the knob that would grant him freedom from this pocket of hell. He'd barely had time to note the mysterious semi-circle of receded flame around him before he was on the other side, back into the hallways of the house and a mercifully cooler environment. The fire in the room vanished. The Doctor dropped the door to the floor, ripped his cricketing jacket off to stomp the embers out, and then leaned on his knees as he tried to catch his breath around the hard coughs that wracked his slender frame. As he tried to gather himself, he watched the door. There were scorch marks on it this time, but as the Doctor continued to stare they began to fade rapidly. It was as though the wood was dissolving the burns, swallowing them until they were completely gone. Good as new, as though nothing had happened. The Doctor, on the other hand, still looked a wreck.

Very curious indeed.

Recovering at last from the effects of the smoke inhalation, the Doctor picked his jacket up off the floor and straightened himself. After an initial glance around, he tried calling out.

"ADRIC? NYSSA? TEGAN?"

No response. Time to have a more thorough look around, then. Figuring that any old direction was worth a shot, the Doctor decided to take the unexpected route: up. Surely there must be something on that second floor they'd seen from the outside of the house. One quick turn around a corner brought him conveniently to a staircase. It was strange, the Doctor thought as he trundled upwards into the partially-lit unknown. By all means, a house like this in this day and age should be worn and weathered, not brand-new. Unless, of course, it had been renovated recently. They just didn't make houses like this anymore. Still, renovation was not outside the realm of possibility, if his earlier theory was correct that there was a machine generating these horror scenarios. But whatever attacked them in that room, and the fire, was most definitely real. Not to mention the mysterious flame-absorbing doors. There was something more at work here.

It was a bit unusual walking through the hallways of an empty house that, for all intents and purposes, should be completely dark. Every window was blacked out, yet functioning lighting panels in the ceiling skipped along at odd intervals to provide illumination but not the best of guidance. If you needed a bit of sight every once in a while, it would be there. It took the Doctor's eyes a few moments to adjust to this irregularity, but little light was ultimately better than no light at all.

It wasn't that he was afraid of the dark, so to speak, but sometimes it bored him. Nothing to see, just…black. Consequently, this incarnation wasn't that fond of the color black either, and subconsciously scorned his first three selves for wearing it so often. Still, black presented something of a challenge. Light or no, there was still an environment out there to be interacted with. If you couldn't use your sense of sight, you'd have to use other methods. Reach out and touch things, smell things, listen closely, lick something if you're feeling daring.

Actually, that didn't sound like such a bad idea.

Reaching the top of the banister, the Doctor swabbed the railing with his index finger and stuck it in his mouth. Why hadn't he thought of this before? No doubt, tasted like 25th century, but there was something…more. There was a strange tingling sensation on his tongue, not unlike certain fizzing candies. It wasn't very pleasant. The Doctor dug around in his pockets for that stray Jelly Baby and popped it into his mouth, hoping to alleviate the chemically taste. It didn't completely do the job, but it would have to do for now. After swallowing, the Doctor finally realized what the mysterious substance was. He looked around at the walls.

"Of course you're a mystery," he said aloud, "you're a house. Houses are always full of secrets. Secrets brought in by the people who live in them, people who use them, make more secrets, leave some, take some with them. What's that scratch on the wall? I don't know, I might never know, but _you_ do. Was it…some young boy rough-housing with his brother? Older? Younger? Was it a wife trying to kill her husband? Did she miss and hit the wall instead? Was the room just too full of people at a Christmas party or a wedding and someone with sharp buttons got knocked against the wall? Well, you're different, though. You don't _have_ scratches on your walls. You _can't_ have them, as a matter of fact, because you, my friend, are built of regenerative alloy. You're a self-repairing house, that's why your doors don't burn properly. But that doesn't mean that things haven't happened in you. Ghastly things, it seems. But why? What are you? A murdering house that covers up its own evidence? …Well, quite. I think that's enough for now, Doctor. You know what they say, talking to yourself while pretending to talk to houses is the first sign of madness."

From out of one of the side-rooms, completely unexpected, came a small, creaky, but definitely synthesized voice in response:

"…N-oo-ooo…"

The Doctor's feet rooted to the ground as his head swiveled in the direction of the voice.

"No? …Hello?" he replied, tentatively. Silence again, except for a small crackling sound. Moving towards the source of the sound, he reached a door with an active lighting panel above it. Cautiously he turned the knob and looked inside, ready to jerk his head back in case any fire decided to ambush him again. There was no sense of mysteriously rising heat, so he proceeded to open the door all the way and step inside. This room looked like the interim spaces from before, except more poorly lit and already containing an occupant.

The Doctor moved forward cautiously, narrowing his eyes a little at the figure slumped against the far wall. It was definitely humanoid, but it didn't look very…organic. Reaching the middle of the room, the Doctor crouched down and inspected the chrome being from a closer but safe distance. Its face craned upwards until it was looking directly at the Doctor. It spoke again.

"Si-ir…my sen-sors indicate that you…a-are not mad. You-u are…men-tally sound. You-u are simply…al-one."

"Quite right, thank you," replied the Doctor, happy to have something resembling a sentient being to talk to again. "Oh, sorry, hello, I'm the Doctor. And unless I'm very much mistaken, you, my friend, are an interface android; designed to communicate between humans and the most highly sophisticated of technologies."

"Tha-at is co-rrect," said the android. "I…am ca-alled Myg."

"A pleasure to meet you, Myg," said the Doctor with a smile, "Well, at least I hope so. You certainly don't look hostile. Have you been here long?"

"Te-en years, at least," Myg groaned, "a-at least…since this si-ite was…abandoned." The Doctor's eyebrows arched. If he was lucky…

"Really? Well then, perhaps you can explain a thing or two to me about this house," the Doctor said as he removed the sonic screwdriver from his pocket again, brandishing it like a kindly veterinarian about to give an injection to a sick animal, "after I give you a little tune-up to repair those voice circuits of yours."


	5. Heartbeat

Nyssa had stopped singing a while ago. Again, probably a quirk of Alzarian biology stemming from their amphibious stage, but Adric was clearly the one with the superior lung capacity. Something in him was definitely wearing down, though, as his volume had been decreasing gradually over the course of the past few minutes and his body was looking less tense. Tegan still hadn't come back and Nyssa was starting to get a bit worried. On the other hand, if Tegan's fear was total nothingness, it meant there was technically nothing in the fear rooms to harm her. In a way, she might even be safer there than in the whole rest of the house.

Besides, Nyssa was still reluctant to leave Adric alone, especially since that would mean splitting the group up even more. Even though his conditions seemed to be improving, he was still very worn out and would likely be the most vulnerable or even a burden if they went into another room and were attacked again. Also, Nyssa knew he hated being told to stay put and wait, especially when he felt there was something he could do to help. For now, she would stay with him until he was in a better state to be moved again. Nyssa's legs were starting to ache and cramp after all her time sitting on the floor, so she stood up and tried moving around the room a bit.

"Please don't go."

The whimpering break in the song turned Nyssa back to Adric's corner. He was looking at her with mournful, begging eyes and spoke again. "Why did you have to die?"

Nyssa's heart sank; Adric's mental instability hadn't dissipated yet. He still believed the corpses from earlier were reality instead of what he was seeing in front of him now. Nyssa needed to think of another reinforcing tactic. For now, just talking would have to do.

"Adric," she said, calmly, "I told you, I'm not dead. Tegan's not dead, the Doctor's not dead, and you're not dead. _I_ certainly can't be dead because I'm standing here talking to you right now, am I not?"

"Something's talking to me," he replied.

"Adric, listen," said Nyssa, adding a bit more plea to her voice as she finally thought of something that might plausibly work, "if you would just let me get close to you I could show you where our heartbeats are and prove to you that we are not dead!"

"My brother died, you know," Adric continued in his daze, virtually ignoring Nyssa's words. "He died cold. Battered and throttled by Marshmen fresh from Mistfall. Not like our parents, though. Forest fire. They died hot."

The morbidity of Adric's retellings was sending uncomfortable shudders up Nyssa's spine; not just because Adric never talked like this but because of the image it was conjuring up in her memories. The TARDIS viewscreen, the entire Traken Union darkening, dissolving into the entropy field…

…Dying cold…enveloped in freezing blackness…or heat death…scorched bare…but what about _warmth_?

Nyssa had another idea. Not long after the group's escapades in Castrovalva, she had been browsing the TARDIS library for information about therapeutic techniques and technology now that the Zero Room was gone. Somewhere in there she had run across a book with a section on pressure therapy, a practice pioneered by an Earth woman called Temple something, that worked on the principle of putting the subject in a full-body squeeze machine to lower their tension and anxiety. Obviously Nyssa did not have such a machine handy, but the book had also said that the machine aspect was meant to substitute for organic contact, embraces and the like. Organics were exactly what was needed right now.

"None of us are dead, Adric," said Nyssa as she began to make her way over to Adric's corner. "Now I'm coming over and I'm going to show you." Even through her stride belayed confidence, Nyssa was still nervous. Adric had demonstrated before that even though he looked weak, he was still capable of doing damage if provoked. As she got nearer, Adric recoiled more tightly against the wall. He never took his eyes off her and barely blinked. Nyssa stretched her arms out slightly, ready to defend herself if Adric attacked her again but trying not to appear threatening. She didn't feel too sure about her success in the latter.

How should she handle the final approach? Swooping in and grabbing him before he could react sounded like a bad idea. Listening to her better judgment she moved in slowly, showing that she meant to help him. At last, she placed her hands on his shoulders; Adric went rigid. He did not lash out. Taking this as her cue, Nyssa quickly wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him in a tight hug. Adric froze up completely, save for a small shuddering gasp that escaped him. Then, slowly but surely, he started to settle. Nyssa knelt there holding him for many minutes.

"We are not dead," Nyssa repeated. "See? See how warm our skin is?" She reached down and took one of Adric's hands in hers. The palm was warm from all the clutching, but the back was cold. Nyssa stroked it with her thumb before starting to bring it up to her chest. Then she hesitated. Adric still wasn't retaliating, but she didn't want to make herself too inviting if he snapped again made a bid for her throat. Besides, her jacket was a bit too thick for someone to hear a heartbeat through just their hand and decency kept her from taking it off. Instead, she cradled his head in one hand and pressed his ear to her heart.

"Listen. Hear my heartbeat?" she said, softly, as Adric's ragged breathing began to relax. "I'm fine, I'm alive, and I'm right here." With her free hand, Nyssa took one of Adric's hands and placed it against his chest where his own heartbeat was coming off its high from all the stress.

"You're alive, too, Adric."

The boy was slumped against Nyssa completely now, eyes closed and gradually going more limp in her arms. She gathered him up closer and leaned against the wall to support their combined weight, whispering "we're alive…we're alive…" over and over again. His breathing returned to a more natural rate and finally slipped into the cadence of sleep. For now, Nyssa's job was done. As she contentedly hummed an old Traken lullaby to herself, or to Adric, or to the house, or to whatever could hear her, she hoped that Alzarian rapid-healing applied as much to the mind as it did to the body.

* * *

Her heartbeat in her ears; that was the only sound. On one hand, it meant she was still alive. On the other hand, it meant she was alone again. Were Tegan in a less dire situation, she would've declared herself "Fed up with all of this," but this hardly seemed the time to make such an understatement. Or was it? If she'd made it out of this world of nothing once before, surely she could do it again. All she had to do was walk straight and think of a solid wall, right? Putting her hands out in front of her, Tegan turned on the spot and started to walk towards the hypothetical door. Taking cautious steps at first so as not to accidentally injure herself, she slowly began moving faster. Still no wall.

Tegan tried to focus on the solidness as she had before, but this time she was finding it much more difficult to work around the probing feeling in her mind. The sensation had been easy to shake as just nerves or paranoia the first time, but now that it had been spoken of aloud by her friends and identified as a shared phenomenon, it was a more legitimate distraction. She couldn't clear her head or think straight anymore. In fact, this whole scenario was not unlike her recent horrific experience with the Mara. Tegan didn't really stop to think about how grateful she was that at least this time she wasn't being taunted by philosophical clowns in her head.

She tried running again, trying to recall the feeling from before of knowing the solidness beneath her and knowing it was real. Running…running…more running…surely she must have run the lengths of several laps around the house by now. Wherever that wall was, the pain of slamming headlong into it was unlikely to override the joy of finally finding the means to a way out. Finally she slowed to a halt, needing to ease the pain in her feet. Heels really weren't the most practical footwear for adventuring through time and space, were they? Not daring to sit down in case the existence of the floor started debating itself if it wasn't in contact with just her feet, Tegan braced herself against her knees to catch her breath before removing her shoes to flex a little. She was just about to put them back on when the absurd thought crossed her mind of throwing one or both of her shoes into the abyss to see if she hit anything. Ultimately, she decided against it on the grounds that she would almost certainly just lose them.

Tegan couldn't decide which adjective fit the situation more: preposterous or terrifying. No Doctor, no Nyssa, no Adric, no TARDIS, nothing at all. In a fit of something that might conceivably be called a precursor to insanity, she settled on preposterous. That was it. She'd had it. Enough was enough. Curtains down, lights out, end of scene. She was sick of this, she would have no more to do with it, and _she wanted out._

"I DEMAND THAT _SOMETHING_ EXIST, RIGHT _NOW!_"

And there was a clatter. From the sound and the vibrations in the floor, it was close by. Very close by. Inches away. Tegan stooped down to pick the object up and found herself grasping a long wooden handle, not unlike a bat. Weighing the thing in her hands, she found it a bit heavy but light enough that she could conceivably swing it at something with reasonably good accuracy. She moved it around experimentally before trying an actual swing.

_Bump._

Tegan froze before putting one hand out. There it was – the wall. At _last!_ She felt around some more. No knob, no door. Abandoning almost all reason, Tegan hoisted the handle above her shoulder and swung it as hard as she could against the wall. With a satisfying _crack_, something in the wall started to give. There was the slight sound of plaster chunks crumbling to the floor. She swung again. _Crack._ More of the wall fell to the floor. Small shimmers of light began to poke through from the other side and fill the nothing. _Crack._ Less wall, more light. Feeling as crazed and desperate as she was during her frantic attempt to fly the TARDIS and escape the Urbankan ship just a week before, Tegan swung repeatedly with her magnificent weapon. It was like her will made manifest. She had made something out of nothing and she was going to use it with all her might. At last, with one final stroke, enough of the wall gave way for her to go barreling through it and back into the interim space; back into something resembling reality. She still clutched the weapon above her head in triumph.

In the corner sat Nyssa, cradling a sleeping Adric in her lap. Her unearthly green eyes were staring at Tegan, looking nothing short of horrified.

"TEGAN! PUT THE AXE DOWN!"


End file.
